The Thesis WordPress Theme
Why I still love The Thesis WordPress Theme
After I took the step the self-host my primary blog, the next step that greatly helped me increase earnings was choosing a highly-customizable theme. I don’t necessarily recommend doing this at the beginning, since it does cost money to get a good theme, but once you are committed to blogging and are willing to invest a few bucks, putting that money towards a good theme is a good investment.
At the time the best premium theme (that I was aware of) was Semiologic, which was a fantastic theme that gave users a lot more control. It cost me $300 for it, but I quickly made that money back because the theme allowed me optimize my ad placement in ways that no other themes did.
Enter The Thesis Theme
I remember when Thesis came out and I heard people talking about it left and right. Almost every blogger I knew was using it and I for about a year I made the foolish assumption that because I paid $300 for me theme it must have been better. Truth be told, even though Thesis was less than a 1/3 of the price as what I was paying it was a better theme that allowed me to do even more with my blog – and had much better support as well.
So I have now been using it for just about 2 years and I consider it to be the best $87 I ever spent on my blog. It isn’t the prettiest theme around – there are some gorgeous ones out there that I have tried, but ended up scrapping because they were so complex and confusing on the backend. But what it lacks in visual pizazz it makes up in other areas.
SEO
It is pretty well SEO-optimized right out of the box. SEO is interwoven into the theme and it eliminates the need for the All-In-One SEO plugin.
Support
The support forums for Thesis have been a lifesaver for me. The WordPress Thesis Theme has a huge community of users and some very helpful folks in the forums who have answered many questions that I have had over the last couple years. This is why I still love Thesis theme.
Price
You can get a single use license for $87 or a unlimited use license for $164. With either you get lifetime updates for FREE.
For those trying it out
Now if you are really sharp with PHP, CSS, and HTML the Thesis Theme may not be as beneficial to you since you can make all these changes yourself. But for someone like me who is mediocre at best with HTML and CSS (and who knows nothing about PHP) having a theme that gives me the ability to make tons of customizations without knowing code is pretty amazing.
If you decide to go the Thesis route, take my advice and
make sure you get the OpenHook Plugin. Especially if a little bit of coding scares you. This plugin makes Thesis dead simple to use and to make endless customizations with ease.